Clin­ton fends off FBI email fall­out as polls nar­row

HILLARY Clin­ton bat­tled to con­tain re­newed FBI fo­cus on her con­tro­ver­sial emails as Don­ald Trump blitzed west­ern states in the tight­en­ing race for the White House.

Nine days be­fore the vote, the 69-year-old for­mer sec­re­tary of state hit the cam­paign trail hard in the bat­tle­ground state of Florida.

Ms Clin­ton blazed through brunch at an Ir­ish pub, an AfricanAmer­i­can Bap­tist church, a soul food restau­rant, an early vot­ing site and a rally at a gay night­club.

Much of her two-day visit to the Sun­shine State fo­cused on en­cour­ag­ing early vot­ing. Ms Clin­ton says a record 200 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have reg­is­tered to vote, 20 mil­lion of whom have al­ready done so.

But her cam­paign was jolted when FBI boss James Comey an­nounced on Oc­to­ber 28 that his agents are re­view­ing a newly dis­cov­ered trove of emails, res­ur­rect­ing an is­sue Ms Clin­ton had hoped was be­hind her.

The nom­i­nee’s re­sponse has been to hit out at Mr Comey’s move as “deeply trou­bling” and to rally sup­port­ers to get out and vote, turn­ing the ta­bles on Mr Trump by brand­ing him as un­fit to lead the na­tion.

“When you’re knocked down, what mat­ters is whether you get up again,” she told a packed LGBT rally at a gay night­club in Wil­ton Manors, just out­side Fort Laud­erdale.

“With Don­ald, it’s al­ways Don­ald Trump first and ev­ery­one else last. He abuses his power, he games the sys­tem and doesn’t care who is left hold­ing the bag,” she added.

Mr Trump, him­self un­der fire for al­leged sex­ual im­pro­pri­ety and fac­ing mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions from 12 women, has glee­fully seized upon Mr Comey’s move in an at­tempt to off­set his own trail­ing in most polls.

The Repub­li­can cam­paigned hard on Oc­to­ber 30, at­tend­ing church in Las Ve­gas, be­fore lead­ing three ral­lies in Ne­vada, Colorado and New Mex­ico, whip­ping up his sup­port base against Ms Clin­ton.

“We all know about Hillary’s mount­ing le­gal trou­bles, that she has brought onto her­self with her se­rial, wil­ful, pur­pose­ful and de­lib­er­ate crim­i­nal con­duct,” he told the crowd in Al­bu­querque, New Mex­ico.

“Hillary Clin­ton is not the vic­tim – you the Amer­i­can peo­ple are the vic­tims of this cor­rupt sys­tem in ev­ery sin­gle way and folks this is your last chance to save it,” he said.

Ms Clin­ton side has re­acted with fury to Mr Comey’s move, de­mand­ing that he ex­plain in de­tail why he had ef­fec­tively re­opened an in­quiry de­clared com­plete in July.

An ABC News/Wash­ing­ton Post sur­vey put the Demo­cratic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date just one point ahead of her Repub­li­can chal­lenger. –